I’m at my daughter’s gymnastics facility. Her practice is 4 hours long, so I bring my laptop to get some work done.
The area that has a couple tables is adjacent to one of the smaller gyms where they have dance classes sometimes.
The teenagers that take the dance classes, as well as sometimes their moms, pile all their bags, boots, fast food garbage, etc. all over the 3 or 4 small tables. They aren’t even using the chairs or tables, but they completely dominate them with all their junk and then go in and take their class.
So today I get there and every table is covered with junk. I pick one that only has a pair of dirty boots (standing, soles down, on the table), two soft drink bottles, a crumpled Arby’s bag, and the dirty peeled off top to a yogurt container, and put the stuff on the (carpeted) floor next to the table. (tons of their junk is all over the floors already too).
The class ends, and everyone comes piling out. Some moms show up as well.
One of the girls and her mom actually start complaining loudly about their stuff being moved. I think they were trying to get me to say something. I didn’t say a word. Then the mom actually taps me on the shoulder and faux innocently asks “Do you know who moved our things?”
Me: “Yes, I did. This was the most empty table.”
The mom: “Oh, I didn’t think anyone would need these tables for anything super important.”
Me: “My daughter’s gymnastics practice is 4 hours long so I try to get some work done.”
She kinda harumphs angrily, walks like 2 steps away, and loudly says to her daughter “I don’t know why he needs to move our stuff to play a game on his computer.”
I almost let it go, but I just couldn’t.
Me: “Ma’am, you MIGHT have a point if it weren’t for the fact that I make computer games for a living, and what you see on my computer is our latest game. Tables really aren’t the right place for people’s dirty boots and empty fast food garbage. There are 4 trash cans within 20 feet of us.”
She had turned around when I said ma’am, but after the above she just grumbled and left.
I get so sick and tired of these entitled, selfish, disrespectful (self censored).
This post is a bit self serving, but I think the information could potentially be useful to other indie game developers as well. I really hope everyone who reads this will share it as widely as possible so we can get as much feedback gathered as possible.
One of the hardest things for indie game developers is getting the word out about their game so they can get a nice core of early players who will test, give feedback, help them iterate on their design, and get their game polished.
Personally, what I would really like to have early on is about 100-500 hardcore, dedicated players who will play the heck out of your game and stick with it for a few months. You want them to stay dedicated so they can understand where you’ve been and become a core group of tested players whose feedback you can benefit from for many years to come.
So the $64,000 question is: how do you get those couple hundred players?
GAMING FORUMS:
Gaming forums SHOULD be a great place to get the word out about your game. Thousands of gamers, many of which are always looking for something new and interesting, gathered in once place, in a medium that has self selected people who like to communicate.
Unfortunately, many (most?) gaming forums are completely insane with how rapidly they shut you down if you post about your game. They accuse you of spam even if all you do is make one post. Even if you check back regularly, answer questions people post, etc. (which is something an actual spammer would never do), they will warn, ban, block, etc. with impunity. I hate that so many gaming sites do this, and I wish they’d change, but I lack the power or influence to make this happen.
I don’t know if this is just overzealous moderation or bad policies. Either way, it is really disappointing and terrible for the industry as a whole. The mega giant blockbusters don’t need to communicate directly with gamers so they aren’t affected. It is the smaller games and indies that need a way to talk to gamers, and the best medium for this is being consistently made unavailable.
Are there any gaming sites/forums that aren’t like this? Where you can post about your game and actually get a bunch of people who will try out your game, give you feedback, and potentially join your hardcore group of early adopters? If so, please share in the comments!
GAMING BLOGS:
I read a lot of gaming blogs, and there are people on tons of them that I would love to have as testers or early/trial players. But blog topics are determined by the blog author, and I rarely see an opportunity in a discussion to say “Oh speaking of (topic being discussed), you guys should try my new game.” It doesn’t feel natural and instead feels disruptive or just too far off topic.
I have tried mailing blog authors and asking them to write about one of our games, and in a number of cases some awesome bloggers have done this. But these blog posts seem to get mostly ignored by the readers. I think blog readers are generally looking for commentary, analysis, or controversy. So when they see an article that is a nice, calm “hey check this cool thing out”, I think blog readers tune it out or say “oh yeah I will check that out later” but never get around to it.
So as much as I love blogs, I am not sure how well they work for getting the word out about your game. Perhaps if there are some specific blogs designed to promote indie games or to help gamers find new and unique games. Again, if anyone knows of such a thing please post about it in the comments.
ADVERTISING:
In my experience this is just a money pit. Indie companies don’t have tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to dump into advertising, so chances are you won’t ever be able to get enough coverage to break through the din of marketing noise. People in marketing know that repetition is the key to making your advertising message effective. It isn’t the first time someone sees your game ad that they try it out. It is more like the 5th or 6th time they see it. Then they say “oh hey, there’s another ad for that game I keep seeing. Maybe I should try it out.”
It is hard enough for an indie company to get enough ad coverage for someone to see their ad once. Getting the ad in front of the same person 5 or more times? Nearly impossible.
Advertising on some smaller, specialized sites might be effective, and once again I’d love to hear some suggestions from readers about sites where an indie company could advertise and actually have it generate some good results.
GAME AGGREGATORS/PLATFORMS:
This is where sites like Kongregate (flash) or Pheeva (html5) come into play. I’ve never made a game that would work with these types of sites, so my experience here is zero. I’d love to hear from people who have put games on sites like this – especially if you did so with the purpose of driving people to your “main” or “bigger” gaming site.
FACEBOOK:
Ugh. I hate the dominant position Facebook has taken as a gaming platform, mainly because it is a pretty bad platform for gaming in general. Tons of screen/UI real estate is eaten up by Facebook, a third party can (and does) change the API on you at will, and if you want to charge money they force you to use THEIR currency from which they take 30% (at least) of your gross.
The only option here, imho, for indies is to make a light or simple version of your game and put it on Facebook just to entice people to play your real game (similar to the aggregators above).
Alternatively, what about just sending updates, high scores, etc. to people’s walls. Does this still work? If so, is it effective? Also, how hard is this to build into your game?
It sounds like Jacobs’ is saying that from the time EA bought Mythic, the direction of game design didn’t go the way he wanted or the way he felt was best.
So I broke down and started playing a Facebook game recently. Not much has changed. The same lame tricks and the same lame forcing you to spam your friends into oblivion.
Please give this article a read, and let me know what you think.
The upcoming release of Coin ‘n Carry is a huge milestone for my company, Frogdice. It is our first mass market game, our first social web game, and our first non-RPG. That’s a lot of firsts, but I’m just getting started.
It is the first game where I did not write a single line of code. It is the first game playable by people of ALL ages. It is our first game without built in chat!
This article explains the basics of Coin ‘n Carry while also delving a bit into some general aspects of the social gaming space and why putting your game on Facebook is not necessarily the best move.
Apple has absolutely kicked ass in the last 5-10 years. iPod, iPhone, iPad, Macbook, and the last couple versions of MacOS. All huge hits and deservedly so.
Is it really so hard to just stop there? Is it really necessary to start giving Apple credit for things they don’t deserve any credit for?
Apparently for the media cultists who worship Steve Jobs like a god, it is indeed necessary:
“While the VCR and later the DVR already started to free viewers from being held hostage to network schedules, iTunes and the platforms that followed took it to the next level.”
Total bullshit. The DVR is what killed “appointment television.” NOTHING else deserves credit. Everything else simply rode the coat-tails of the DVR. Period.
DVR ownership is expected to break 50% of all households next year. That’s ~200 million daily DVR users.
After DVRs, Netflix played a HUGE role by letting people cheaply rent entire seasons of tv shows. Far, far cheaper than buying them in iTunes.
I was looking for an old Dragon Magazine article in my handy dandy 5 CD reference I bought over a decade ago. While skimming through the April 1991 issue, I saw their “Role of Computers” section where they review computer RPGs. I’ve included a few screen grabs for your elucidation:
Blown up:
Full section:
The inside front cover of the magazine, that shows the date and other contents:
Now, I could be cheeky and leave it up to you to draw the same conclusion I did. I have very smart readers, so I don’t think it would be that tough. But just in case members of the lesser entertainment mediums blow through here, I’ll summarize:
In 1991, Secret of Monkey Island cost $70. That’s 20 years ago, and the cost of the game was HIGHER than what you’d pay now for a similar quality release.
It just goes to show you that the value of video games is not just great, but getting greater over time. No wonder the gaming industry is destroying movies, music, and all other forms of entertainment. We’ve got them beat on quality, depth of experience, AND price.
I’ve been working on a list of MMOs and MMO companies that have been canceled (either before or after release) from the last 10 years. In particular, I am focusing on post-2004 (for obvious reasons!). Here is the list I have come up with so far. I am sure I’ve missed tons. Please post in the comments with games and companies I need to add:
Major Cancelled MMOs:
Motor City Online (EA): 2003
Earth & Beyond (Westwood/EA): 2004
Asheron’s Call 2 (Microsoft/Turbine): 2005
Matrix Online (Monolith): 2005 (effectively)
Shadowbane (Wolfpack): 2006
The Saga of Ryzom (Nevrax): 2006
Auto Assault (NCSoft): 2007
The Sims Online (EA): 2007
RF Online (CCR): 2008
Hellgate: London (Flagship): 2009
Tabula Rasa (NCSoft/Destination Games): 2009
Dungeon Runners (NCSoft): 2010
Mythos (Flagship): 2010
Earth Eternal (Sparkplay): 2010
APB: All Points Bulletin: 2010
Pre-Release Cancelations:
Dragon Empires (Codemasters): 2004
True Fantasy Live Online (Microsoft): 2004
Mythica (Microsoft): 2004
Ultima Online 2 (EA): 2004
Imperator (Mythic): 2005
Marvel Universe Online (Microsoft/Cryptic): 2008
Dark & Light (NPCube): 2008
Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising (Perpetual Entertainment): 2008
Stargate Worlds (Cheyenne Mountain/FireSky): 2010
The Agency (Sony): 2011
It used to be that when your birthday rolled around, it really meant something when someone remembered to give you a call or send you a card. It meant that person cared enough about you to remember your birthday and just acknowledge it. It was a small, simple thing but I believe many people considered it meaningful and worthwhile.
Facebook killed this.
The little reminder that pops up every day to tell you which of your friends are having a birthday (or will have one soon) means that nobody actually remembers anyone’s birthday any more. When you see a friend’s birthday notice, you can go to their wall and see 90 gazillion “Happy Birthday!” wall posts.
There are so many, and from so many random people, that they have been rendered meaningless.
Nobody actually remembered anything. Oftentimes, the people posting happy birthday messages barely even know the person they are posting about. They might just be Farmville friends someone picked up in order to unlock more features.
There are tons of huge benefits from a site like Facebook. Overall, I think it is a titanic achievement and a marvelous tool. But we have lost some things too – not just privacy. We’ve lost the good feeling we get when someone remembers our birthday, or the joy of remembering someone ELSE’S birthday and making them feel special just by the remembrance.
That is the question asked by Wolfshead, and he answers it in the affirmative. He makes a number of excellent arguments in his long and detailed post. I will summarize a few of the more salient points, and give my own answer to this question after the jump:
Bright Hub is one of the top 200 most popular web sites.
Most of you know I am the Managing Editor for Gaming at Bright Hub. We produce about 300 articles (including guides, analysis, walkthroughs, and reviews) for games on all platforms (including pen-and-paper and board games!). I have been working there for almost 3 years now am proud to have been a part of its meteoric growth. I truly believe it is one of the best destinations for gaming information on the internet.
I was excited to learn today that Bright Hub has now become one of the top 200 most popular web sites in the US. We are closing in on 30 million monthly page views per month globally, and over 15 million views per month in the US. This is an excellent achievement that is a testament to the excellent management at Bright Hub as well as the hard working staff of writers and editors. I’d like to think I played my part, as the gaming section alone is about 3 million views a month of that traffic.
If you aren’t familiar with Bright Hub, here are a few quick links to get involved:
And if you are someone who would like to get paid to write about games, send me an email at mhartman@editors.brighthub.com. We are always looking for more good writers.
And maybe, also at that time, that’s just to where the internet — I hate to use that broad-based term in quotes — had gotten. Like, people love flaming. The whole thing is all — they want controversy. They’re going to say things. It’s like, “Hey, you don’t know who I really am. I can say whatever I want.” You see it in the press now.
He blames “the internet” and flaming, but still after all these years cannot admit it was their absolute despicable and deceitful business model.
Amazing.
Roper is like a drug addict. Until he admits his problem, you can’t deal with him.
Nobody in the world should hire this guy until he admits the #1 reason people hated Hellgate and Flagship with such a passion was their absolutely disgusting business model.
I talked to people in the industry, they thought, “I thought that was a great idea, especially at the time, for a business model.” “Hey, the game is free to play? Oh, but if I want to give you $10 a month, I’m going to get everything you ever do? Sure, I’m in.” But gamers hated the idea.
Clueless. He acts like everyone in the industry thought it was a good idea. Did he talk to idiots? Hellgate was roundly mocked for its business model months before it came out, and they didn’t do anything to change it.
How could he not understand that you’re either subscription or not. And even if you must go with some kind of weird partial-subscription system, you can’t TAKE AWAY the content people already paid for.
If my subscription gets me access to Zone X, you can’t take away Zone X when I stop subscribing. You can stop giving me new zones – fine. But taking away old ones I paid for? Stupid.
Or even worse, locking characters because they are one of the “subscriber only” classes? Or locking out gear? ANYONE thought that was smart? Really?
I think I was very disappointed that followed into going Cryptic. You know, people go, “Oh, great. Now this guy is going to come here and screw everything up.”
Which he did. The Cryptic “C-store” is an absolute abortion of a “freemium” attempt. The things you pay for are grossly overpriced, and they are charging extra for things that should be core gameplay elements.
We even at one point just realized, “We’re never going to make money off box sales. Even if this game sells multiple millions of copies, we might never make our money back on the box sales. We’re going to have to make our money on the back end, on the online.” Because that was a much lower nut to crack every month. But we just didn’t get the number of players.
Perhaps this explains the stupidity and the greed: desperation. They realized that the online/subscription method was their only hope to break even, so they got desperate and greedy. Instead of figuring out a Guild Wars type model where they charged a fixed price for chunks of content – or mini-expansions – they were hoping for the cash cow of subscriptions (and the free money from “sleepers”). Stupid move.
Bill Roper joined established MMO developer Cryptic Studios as design director in 2008.
Less than two years later, Roper would resign from the company after the launches of Champions Online and Star Trek Online, each of which was criticized by gamers and reviewers.
Reconcile that “resigned” part with the fact that he hasn’t been able to find a job – ANY job – for 8 months.
Translation: Roper was fired. This guy appears to be allergic to honesty.
So a picture of the new Wonder Woman costume is out, worn by the soon to be Wonder Woman Adrianne Palicki. What amazes me most about this is the fact that Lynda Carter totally crushes her in hotness. I even think the old costume was better.
Both pictures appear after the jump for your viewing pleasure. I’d love to hear your opinions on the new costume, the new actress, and how they compare to the original.
Our car had to go in for routine service today, so we had a loaner car. No big deal, right? Well, the loaner car doesn’t have satellite radio (I guess I should say Sirius, but that’s the only game in town now anyway for satellite radio).
So I’m listening to regular radio in the car and wow… what a joke. Does anyone even listen to “terrestrial” radio any more? If so, how do you bear it? It has to be 80% commercials if not more.
Plus, for some stupid reason they follow the television model of having shows change right at hourly and half-hourly breaks, with 10 minute commercial blocks in the last 5 minutes of an hour/half-hour and the first 5 minutes of the next. Why does this suck even worse in the car? Because that’s exactly when you are spending a lot of time in the car. Most appointments are at either :00 or :30, so for anything close you are listening to nothing but commercials.
If you take anyone who actually listens to the radio in their car, and give them satellite radio for a week, there is NO WAY they could ever tolerate “terrestrial” radio ever again. The difference in the technologies is enormous.
There are a lot of new technologies that nudge older ones out without destroying them. Radio took a bit of market share from books. Television took a lot of market share away from radio. The internet takes market share away from all of those. But the others still exist and still serve a valuable and viable purpose. Books are still a unique form of entertainment that is portable, extremely detailed, and evocative of your imagination. Radio is great for times where you can only listen, but cannot watch (like while driving). Television’s merits are obvious as are the internet.
But terrestrial radio? It adds NOTHING to the equation when compared to satellite radio.
I cannot wait until terrestrial radio either dies completely or is forced to massively transform itself to be more similar to satellite. Because right now, its a dead technology walking.
It got me thinking about revolutionary games that really made an impression on me both as a gamer and a developer.
1) Age of Empires: In many ways, this is the game that got me back into playing games after many years away from them (with the exception of MUDs). My wife got me into it while I was visiting her once, and we played the living daylights out of it. I know that AoE did not revolutionize the genre, but the combination of history with RTS mechanics made it a lot of fun.
2) Diablo: This is another game my wife introduced me to during my early days of “returning” to gaming. This was also the first game I ever modded. In addition to the sheer joy of mindless mob killing and loot grinding, the introduction to modding was a very significant one for my gaming life.
3) Threshold: The first game that I ever created, completely on my own. I have to list it here, right? I feel it was certainly revolutionary, in that it was possibly the only LP mud out there that required RP. It was certainly the first (and still only) commercial game that enforces RP. The impact it had on my life was pretty enormous, since it resulted in me cutting short my career as a lawyer and becoming an entrepreneur and game developer.
“I don’t think we are going to be seeing the anti-video game crusade for very much longer(though there’ll always be a few loonies). Many adults in the 30-40 year old age range either played video games earlier in life, or still do. And even those in the age range that don’t are well enough acquainted with the idea of video games that they realize “video games are bad” is a load of crap. It won’t be too long until we are running the show, so to speak. And shortly afterwards, we will declare whatever new form of entertainment our kids are embracing to be evil.”
Indeed, that is the direction things are moving.
The average age of a gamer is 35.
26% of all gamers are over the age of 50.
Only 25% are under the age of 18.
In 2007, 40% of all US residents 2 years or older played an online game.
65% of American households play computer or video games.
The gaming industry grosses more than the music and movie industries combined.
It would do well for people in the movie and music industries to realize their day is past.
I love articles like this: the ones that give you something to think and talk about. I wish we had more of them (though the guides and walkthroughs are obviously valuable to our readers on bright Hub).
Obviously, the crowd of folks likely to read this blog are going to agree that video games are not bad. But I still think it is valuable for us pro-gamer types to be aware of the arguments being made against our hobby so we can always be poised to defend it.
When I linked my last blog post on Facebook, one of my friends (*waves to Carly McNamara*) reminded me that there was indeed a Norse-themed MMO in development a few years ago. As soon as I read that, I instantly remembered Mythica (largely because of the trademark infringement lawsuit between Microsoft, developers of Mythica, and Mythic, developers of DAoC). So I decided to read up on Mythica to remind myself of what exactly went wrong that caused it to fail. In the course of that research, I found this:
Chris Lye (Microsoft product manager): The massively multiplayer genre is a hugely crowded and competitive space.
The Wikipedia entry notes: “Some commentators said at the time that the cancellation was evidence that the (English language) massively multiplayer market had become saturated.”
Hugely crowded huh? 10 months later, November 2004 would see the launch of World of Warcraft. I guess it wasn’t really all that crowded and saturated in Feb 2004, was it Chris and “commentators?”
And this part is just for amusement:
GameSpy: Based on the “evaluation of the MMORPG landscape,” in MS rethinking True Fantasy Live Online for Xbox as well?
Chris Lye: Plans for True Fantasy Live Online are the same as always. They are completely unaffected.
True Fantasy Live Online was cancelled less than 4 months later, on June 2, 2004.
Over the last decade or so, there have been a lot of horrendously wrong predictions and opinions about the MMO industry offered by insiders, media, commentators, etc. Please share some of your favorites!
I’m at my daughter’s gymnastics facility. Her practice is 4 hours long, so I bring my laptop to get some work done.
It used to be that when your birthday rolled around, it really meant something when someone remembered to give you a call or send you a card. It meant that person cared enough about you to remember your birthday and just acknowledge it. It was a small, simple thing but I believe many people considered it meaningful and worthwhile.
That is the question asked by 
Our car had to go in for routine service today, so we had a loaner car. No big deal, right? Well, the loaner car doesn’t have satellite radio (I guess I should say Sirius, but that’s the only game in town now anyway for satellite radio).
One of my writers created this really interesting article recently:
When I linked my last blog post on Facebook, one of my friends (*waves to Carly McNamara*) reminded me that there was indeed a Norse-themed MMO in development a few years ago. As soon as I read that, I instantly remembered Mythica (largely because of the trademark infringement lawsuit between Microsoft, developers of Mythica, and Mythic, developers of DAoC). So I decided to read up on Mythica to remind myself of what exactly went wrong that caused it to fail. In the course of that research, I found this:
Discussion